David Ely

Photos and Cloud Sync

A common criticism of the iPhone is that doesn’t sync with “the cloud” as well as Android phones do. This is absolutely true, but I wonder if there aren’t upsides to Apple’s existing “computer as digital hub” paradigm. I post photos onto Flickr, but they’re always copied to my Mac whenever I sync my phone. If Flickr disappears tomorrow, my photos are still safe. If I were only syncing to Flickr (or Picasa or DropBox), I’d be subject completely to the whims of those services. By forcing a tedious sync, Apple is also forcing me to make backups of what are now some of my most important possessions: baby pictures.